I assumed these are common knowledge, but when I mention them to people, they seem perplexed. So here goes…
Slice and lightly parboil your potatoes while your oven is preheating. Optional: add sugar to replace that “young potato sweetness” back in. Don’t overcook. You don’t want them softened through.
Drain and add whatever fat and seasoning you want. Shake the pot back and forth vigorously. You want to “beat them up” a bit and coat the slices with a slurry of potato starch, fat, and seasoning.
Roast normally. I like a hot oven with convection to start then turned down to finish roasting.
PS: when you roast a chicken, save the nice browned solids that drip off. Use this brown “schmaltz” in your roasted potatoes.
Cook’s Illustrated just published their ‘ultimate’ roasted potatoes and they do essentially the same. They use the baking soda in step 1, and add to step 3 by adding a small amount of flavored (chopped fresh rosemary in their recommendation) fat half-way through the roasting. They also use duck fat for the fat!
No. They recommend Yukon gold potatoes. The baking soda is added to “rapidly degrade the pectin in the cells at the exterior of the potato, causing them to release a wet starch that rapidly browns.” The overall recipe was going for very crispy roast potatoes.
I’ll have to try the baking soda. I par boil large chunks of russets then score them with a fork before roasting in duck fat at 415. They always go over well.
Chris – seems like a nonstick pan may be a good idea with the sticky slurry, no? I’ve been cubing and soaking my potatoes in water prior to roasting for some time but it sounds like the hot water here may leach more starch off the surface.
Any pan will work fine. It’s just a question of cleanup. The parboiling does leach the potato starch but it also speeds the whole process up a bit. I also think it leads to puffy on the inside, crusty on the outside potatoes.